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Film & Television
A
Prophecy from the Past?
It was about a week after September 11th when I went to visit a friend. ... We talked about what you'd expect. ... Yeah, I saw it. ... I know, it was horrible. ... And so the conversation ran, punctuated by an occasional sigh, or the extended silence when we'd drift to God knows where, then slowly back again. ... I broke one of the silences. "You know," I offered. "I'm not even sure why, but I found myself thinking about this film ..." "Brazil,"
my friend broke in, without even the hint of a question mark in his voice.
"Exactly," I said. "I was remembering the scene ..." "In the restaurant," he broke in again, this time with at least a bit of a question in there. But he was precisely on target, and he saw it in my face. "I know. Me, too," he'd said. We looked at one another for a moment, only slightly amazed at the coincidence, then began to drift again. ... I can't say exactly why that scene came to me when it
did, much less why it came to my friend. The answer is either ridiculously
obvious, or, more likely, bordering on impossible. ... Such
is the nature of film, at least the better ones. ...
It's been said
often enough that film is like a dream. And in the case of Terry Gilliam's
Brazil, that dream-like quality, and its obverse -- the nightmare -- is
torqued up. There are the literal dream-world sequences, in which the
protagonist -- Sam Lowry, played by Jonathan Pryce -- imagines himself a literal
knight in shining armor who must face a dreaded and awesome foe to rescue the
literal girl of his dreams. But Gilliam's use of these dream sequences
isn't contrived. They're an integral part of the film, as are the
nightmarish moments of being pursued, or the cold-handed torture, or the
madness, or even, at least in some regards, the more nightmarish world of the
dull and dim environment that is the social service system where our protagonist
works.
In all these, Gilliam managed in this 1985 release to paint a portrait of a futuristic world which, on the surface anyway, would seem to bear little resemblance to the world we know and live in. How, then, explain the fact that it was Gilliam's film that came to me and my friend after the events of September 11th, right down to the exact same scene? I can't. ... Except, perhaps, to say that it resembles the realities of this world, again, in the same way a dream resembles waking life. ... The plot
of Brazil unfolds out of a simple and seemingly benign mistake. By
the transposition of a single letter on a form -- which changes the name Tuttle
to Buttle -- a chain of events are set in motion which change the lives of
everyone who is eventually caught up in the consequences of the
fiasco.
When the beginnings of those consequences begin to ripple and reach a social service head, known simply as Spoor {Bob Hoskins}, he begins to fret and asks our hero Lowry if he might fix it. Lowry agrees to try, thinking it shouldn't be all that difficult. But if there's one thing that just about every aspect of this futuristic world has in common, it's that just about everything, at least for those of us who are watching, is apparently much more difficult than it really needs to be. That fact oddly parallels what looked like the early fate of
the film, when Universal, which was to release it in the States, began to sit on
it. Gilliam had delivered his original 142-minute cut in January of '85 --
on time and within budget. Fox Pictures International, which would handle
the overseas distribution, accepted. But over at Universal, studio
president Sidney Sheinberg had other ideas. |
But it was what Sheinberg wanted gone that would become the source of friction and a war of wills between Gilliam, and the film's producer, Arnon Milchen, on the one hand, and Sheinberg and Universal studio, on the other. ... . ******* ******* If you would like to submit something for The Movies feature, or if you simply would like to suggest something you think we ought to cover, e-mail us at ... radiofilmtv@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* ******* If you would like to advertise in this section, or throughout the magazine, please visit our Advertising Info Pages ... or call, write, or e-mail ads@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* ******* |
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